Hay Festival Book Club – Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
– Free Online
In this profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding US history and current crises with a global resonance.
Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Published 10 years ago, it remains fresh and urgent in our divided world.
Further reading
How Ta-Nehisi Coates's letter to his son about being black in America became a bestseller, The Observer
Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how oppression can breed oppression in 'The Message', NPR
About the author
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an award-winning author and journalist. His books include The Water Dancer and The Message. He is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University. Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series.
About Hay Festival Book Club
Timeless titles to offer you a break from the day to day. Can't decide what to read next? Follow your curiosity and join Hay Festival on a journey to imagine the world anew through great literature. Unconstrained by genre or form these are our monthly picks of great books worth reading (or re-reading) right now.
Throughout the month, we'll share interesting links and articles relating to our selection on social media using #HFBookClub and invite you all to get involved with your questions and comments. Each selection will also be marked with a free online event.
If you'd like to recommend a book for consideration, get in touch via bookclub@hayfestival.org.
Happy reading!
Supported by Unwin Charitable Trust
Buy the book for this event
Between the World and Me
In the 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (the abolition of slavery), the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: it is the story of the black body, exploited to create the country's foundational wealth, violently segregated to unite a nation after a civil war and, today, still disproportionately threatened, locked up and killed in the streets. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can America reckon with its fraught racial history?
